Wilderness Society had key role in Hall Mountain

Thank you for your coverage of the historic return of Hall Mountain to the Cherokees (www.smokymountainnews.com/outdoors/item/10467). While the story was good and provided valuable perspectives on the event, it nonetheless failed to mention the role of The Wilderness Society in insuring that the transaction occurred. TWS identified the funding source, assisted in grant writing, and shepherded the grant through a myriad of Washington, D.C., bureaucratic hurdles. It was a great partnership between all of us and what I hope is the first of many. You had to be there!

Reading Room

Like some other readers I know, my taste in books these last 20 years or so has shifted from fiction to non-fiction, especially history, biography, and literary studies. I still follow certain novelists — Anne Tyler, Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and others — and still review novels for this paper, but find that works of fiction simply don’t appeal as much as when I was in my twenties and thirties, when I read stacks of novels and poetry.